With today’s customers becoming more discerning with a preference for customised products to their individual taste and liking, Malaysia’s leading apparel ‘print on demand’ company Famsy is riding on this trend and has successfully grown revenue by 200% year on year to RM8 million in 2020, and projected to achieve RM18 million in 2021.
Its CEO and co-founder Chai Lee Fong attributed the company’s success to a booming apparel market for individualisation, coupled with the company’s ability to fulfil orders with ‘exactness to details’ and speed.
“The global decorated apparel industry has been on an upward trajectory in recent years, and the trend has also caught on in Malaysia,” said Chai, citing a Grand View Research study which forecasts that global market size would amount to USD55.23 billion in 2025. The study added that, in 2018, market size was valued at USD26.75 billion and anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 10.91% over the forecast period of 2019 to 2025.
Chai estimated that, within the Asian market of which Famsy is a key player, the market opportunity currently stands at USD4.65 billion.
Growth factors include increased demand for personalised decorated apparel, coupled with the rise of social commerce and key opinion leaders monetising their efforts with decorated apparel.
“Expectations have changed in terms of the timeline, and quality of what is needed for delivery has changed. Customers want their products faster, which is why it has become more critical than ever to be more agile and nimble to be able to respond quickly to such demands,” said Chai.
“We are now living in the ‘experience economy’ whereby personalisation is much sought after to elevate the customer’s sense of individuality.”
She believes that apparel ‘print on demand’ is a revolutionary business model whereby sales are generated through seamless online product listing, coupled with Famsy’s ability to print and fulfil on demand.
“It’s certainly a vastly superior business model to that of traditional apparel printing which is inefficient, and results in high costs and wastages from bulk productions.”
Within the company’s portfolio is FamsyMall, an online apparel marketplace which allows customers to personalise their own apparel and gifts, and FamsyStores is a one-stop fulfilment platform which helps businesses and entrepreneurs build their own t-shirt and merchandise brand online via its proprietary web app.
“On-demand customisation is a trend that is here to stay. We want to give Malaysians the opportunity to create fully customised t-shirts either for themselves, or as a business by creating their own merchandise brand. Famsy’s winning value proposition is our ability to provide fully integrate systems for a better user experience.”
Famsy recently moved to its new production facility located at Shah Alam. Despite the pandemic, business had soared tremendously so much so that the company had to expand to this new 30,000 square feet of production space.
The company currently has 100 production staff with a 3,000 daily item output rate, achieved through 25 state-of-the-art industrial machines complemented by innovative print technologies.
Famsy currently serves 7,000 brands and 100,000 with a target of increasing these numbers to 200,000 and one million, respectively, within the next three years.
“Post-pandemic, we also have plans to establish regional offices in neighbouring countries so as to gain the ‘first mover’ advantage,” said Chai.
The company’s other trump card is that its advisor is Ganesh Kumar Bangah, the award-winning technology entrepreneur and investor who’s known as the ‘Bill Gates of Malaysia’. Ganesh is also currently executive chairman of Asia-Pacific’s ‘all-in-one’ e-commerce ecosystem Commerce.Asia and ASX-listed Netccentric Limited, while also servicing as chairman of PIKOM’s think-tank arm called Future Digital.
Indeed, the sky’s the limit for Famsy. With proven high growth traction while being the local leader in an unsaturated booming market coupled with its highly experienced team, Famsy can only go from strength to strength in the years ahead.